Orlando City president answers key questions about Lions' MLS future

October 12, 2013|By Paul Tenorio, Orlando Sentinel

Orlando City S.C. took another step closer to a soccer specific stadium in downtown Orlando when the Orlando City Council unanimously approved a plan that would provide $20 million in tourist taxes for the stadium.

If the Orange County Commission approves the plan on Oct. 22, the club likely will bound for Major League Soccer.

This week, the Orlando Sentinel sat down with Orlando City president Phil Rawlins to discuss the future of the club, the steps it will take if it goes to MLS and his thoughts on the process of getting a stadium approved.

Question: If the Orange County vote goes your way what is the timeline for Orlando City Soccer and a move to MLS?

Answer: There's been a political path and the political negotiations, there's been an MLS path and MLS discussions and negotiations. They have both been running down parallel paths, and they really start to come together after the [vote on Oct. 22nd]. This stage it's really waiting to see that we've got the finance plan passed for the stadium. Once that's done, a successful outcome would mean we believe within 30 days, certainly by the end of November, we'd hope to have an MLS announcement in Orlando that we'll be joining Major League Soccer. Our plan is to play in 2015, so that gives about 16 months to get prepared. And first kick for MLS would be March of 2015.

Q. What will you have to build within the club to take Orlando City from USL to MLS levels?

A: It's something we've already prepared for. The club is organized very much along the lines of a small Major League [Soccer] club today. All the departments are already in place, it's not like we're creating whole new parts to the organization. What we will do is add skill sets, add people, add a depth of quality to what we already have here, the infrastructure, we'll grow that. So we'd go from approximately just over 20 employees to somewhere around 60 full-time employees. So 40-plus new jobs created across those departments. Where would they fall? In all sorts of areas, really. We'd bring people on in the marketing area, PR, broadcasting, because we'd have to look at a broadcast contract. Every game in MLS is on television either nationally or locally, so that's an area that we are going to grow. Ticket sales, we'll vastly grow our ticket sales staff. Right now we have about six ticket sales people, we'll grow that quite considerably. And then support staff around them, the operational staff, team operations, full-time trainers, we outsource that and we want to bring that in-house. There are elements like that where we'd grow all sorts of jobs, corporate sales that area would grow as well. Just about every department would see an increase.

Q: Would you be looking at changes in the technical staff, increasing scouting and coaches as well?

A: We would. Obviously Adrian [Heath] would stay in place as our head coach, but he would look to augment his team around him as well. At the moment, for example, we have a part-time goalkeepers coach. That would become a full-time position. Trainers we'd need full-time trainers, one to go on the road and one to stay at home and work on injured players in rehab and stuff like that. Many different opportunities to grow that staff. Director of scouting, technical director, someone to deal directly with MLS because it's a complex negotiation package around salaries and salary caps. All of that needs to be added. That whole team would get beefed up.

Q: Would there be roster changes as well to prepare this team for a jump to MLS?

A: From a team standpoint there are four real core pillars of how you build the team. Pillar No. 1 is your existing USL team. We would believe that a number of those players would make the transition with us. How many? That's down to Adrian and the performance of those players over the next 12 months, but a number of those players that we've got on the books today we'd expect to make the jump to Major League Soccer. They are capable of doing that, they are capable of playing at the next level. That's the core but you've got to supplement that because you're looking at a roster of 28 to 30 players.

The second pillar is the expansion draft, that takes place December of 2014 when the 2014 season is over and we can go in and select and handpick players from the existing MLS teams. That obviously means we've got to do a lot of scouting in 2014 because if we're going to go in and take a center back from Real Salt Lake we better know about what our options are. … There's a lot of groundwork that goes into making sure that expansion draft is successful. The third pillar is the SuperDraft which of course happens right before kickoff in January of '15, a college draft very important. … Assuming we come in '15 with New York then picks one and two will be Orlando and New York so we've got to get prepared for that stage.